When Pitchfork ran a career-spanning interview with Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson in 2011 as part of our 15th anniversary, we noted, "One of these days, ?uestlove will write a memoir, and it will be incredible."

Here it is two years later, and that memoir, Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove, has arrived. And it is incredible. It's clear that music writers have a special attraction to Thompson because he's one of the more unabashed music geeks to ever walk the earth. In the spheres of the music he loves, which is a very large sphere, he knows all the records, all the tracks, who played on what, what the sleeves looks like. He thinks like a critic and loves reflecting on songs and albums as a listener, ranking records and making lists. He's a student of music and pop culture.

But, as the book demonstrates, Thompson is also a wonderful storyteller. Mo' Meta Blues covers his life from his early days in Philadelphia as a child drummer and stage manager for his parents' band to his immersion in hip-hop and the formative years of the Roots. His resume is daunting, endless: co-producer on D'Angelo's Voodoo, binding force for the influential Soulquarians collective, musical director for "Chappelle's Show", band-leading fixture on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" (soon to be "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon"), restaurateur. Along the way, there are encounters with many of his musical heroes, like the time Prince donned a pair of glowing roller skates and dazzled a handful of guests at a Valentine's Day party in Los Angeles.

We spoke at NBC Studios in Manhattan last week. When I arrived at Thompson's small office on the sixth floor of 30 Rock-- a space packed with CDs, DVDs, instruments, a TV-- he was sitting at his computer catching up on Twitter while also looking at texts on his phone. Typical multitasking. The interview took place in the NBC cafeteria, where he ate sushi and a seaweed salad for lunch before heading back to prepare for the next "Late Night" show.

"I'm a music nerd. I grew up in a room with 300 reviews
staring at me from one wall. I'm obsessed with the process."

Pitchfork: You were so immersed in music from an early age, playing and touring with your parents' bands. But at what point did you realize that you were going to make music your life?

Ahmir Thompson: I knew I was going to be a musician. I got my first real drum set at seven, a Vista Light C3 kit that John Bonham had during the Physical Graffiti tour-- one of my dad's drummers got strung out on drugs, and I inherited that set. At that age, I could play drums well enough for an adult to say, "Play my show." I enjoyed it. I liked to travel. I had the knowledge. Technically, I was stage manager at the age of eight.

I should ask my dad: "Why did you teach me how to work the soundboard and place the mic settings and cut gels? Was it because you wanted me to take this path or was it to keep me off the streets?" I think his answer would be more the latter. But it kept me focused on their show, and I was educated. It prepared me. Across the street [gestures out window], at Radio City, when I was 12, the drummer of my father's band got injured. And my dad was confident. He just said, "You know the show. Do it." I became his bandleader at the age of 12.

But my dad did not know about [the Roots' 1993 debut album] Organix. It was only midway through Do You Want More?!!!??! when I finally had to come clean and be like, "All right, I got a record deal and I'm in a group."

Pitchfork: You were afraid to tell him?

AT: Oh, hell yeah.

Pitchfork: It wasn't the kind of music he respected?

AT: The debut of "Yo! MTV Raps" in 1988 was probably the most revolutionary thing to happen to black music since the October '71 debut of "Soul Train". And my dad, just being a surface critic, changing channels and seeing the first four seconds of "Baby Got Back" or "Straight Outta Compton"-- it's not music to him.

He sacrificed everything so that I could go to private school. Sometimes bills weren't paid. Sometimes gas was cut off. But my parents made sure I had the best education and drum lessons no matter what. In his head, he wanted me to follow the path of my schoolmates, who would get pulled out of class to go play with Miles Davis. That was my dad's idea of high art. My father wanted me to be a worker, and I dreamed of being an owner.

By the time Things Fall Apart came out and we had finally managed to go above the surface, he suddenly saw the light. He knew we were legit. Now, he's our biggest champion. I'm sure that How I Got Over and Undun are still in his CD changer in the car. Getting my father's approval was always like this impossible Mount Fuji mission that I just got to the top of two or three years ago. Now that he sees how I've been able to make a living at this for 20 years, at least, he says, "I'm very proud of you. You are the greatest thing that happened to me." That was the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life.

Pitchfork: Your parents must have done a good job of instilling confidence in you. In the book, there are a lot of places along the way where you could have said, "Maybe it's time to do something else."

AT: Everyone has those insecure moments. I mean, I'm cool enough to admit it. I don't feel dweebish because I say I have to check my Metacritic rating and make sure it's still above 80 or whatever. I'm a music nerd. I grew up in a room with 300 reviews staring at me from one wall. I'm obsessed with the process. But as far as the confidence, everyone has insecurities. Kanye says he has insecurities. But being a radical doesn't hurt, [never getting] too comfortable. I've never ever been that in a moment in my life where it's like, [sigh of relief] "This is great." I'm always paranoid. Right now, I'm thinking about my third book. [laughs]

Photo by Ben Watts

Pitchfork: One snapshot of history that I found particularly interesting was the whole Soulquarians period, where you guys were playing music in a house with Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, people who were just starting out and sharing ideas. What do you think when you look back at that?

AT: I wish I remember enjoying that period. For me, it's a whole bowl of stress, because my house is the default house for which these events happen. It's like those John Hughes 80s films when there's 200 people in mom and dad's house-- I'm worried about my walls. I'm worried about people going through my mail. I'm worried about people lighting their cigarettes, walking on trash cans. Yeah, I'll do my obligatory two, three-hour jamming thing, but I'm also worried about noise ordinances.

But in hindsight, that's when [Roots manager] Rich [Nichols] taught us the lesson that you get to contextualize, establish a movement. Besides the one-hit wonder, there's never ever been success in music without the contextualization of being associated with someone else. I don't think it's a coincidence that all these previous hard-to-sell, underground, ignored, not-media-savvy artists were all of a sudden selling one million, two million units during that period of 1998 to 2004: D'Angelo, us, Erykah [Badu], Common, Mos [Def] and [Talib] Kweli. I consider Kanye and Alicia [Keys] to be the steroids version, to the point where they're mainstream artists but they have a left-of-center sense mentality. And now they finish the race and are their own empire.

But that's one of the things I'm proud of. The initial nucleus in my circle, the guys that I dubbed the Illadelphonics when I was first doing shows for Jay-Z, all of those guys have split off and now have their own bands. Adam Blackstone basically just runs the world now: he is [musical director for] Jay-Z, Justin [Timberlake], Selena Gomez, Ne-Yo, he runs at least 15 acts. My keyboard player Omar [Edwards] has got seven: Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Kanye, Timbaland. Pretty much if you are at stadium status and you're touring, your band has to come through that circle. Those same frickin' 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds that used to abuse my PlayStation when I came home off tour and left my house smelling like corn chips with their socks are now running empires, which is amazing to me.

"I have like nine UFO stories, which is basically
a story that no one's ever going to believe."

Pitchfork: You have some great stories in there about Prince-- especially the roller rink party on Valentine's Day.

AT: That was the coolest, safest Prince story I could tell. Ninety-five percent of the other times was us playing music, and there's no story in that. He's insanely private. I figured since he already has those boots that light up when he walks, then there's no revelation if you have a pair of roller skates that make you look like an extra in Xanadu!

Here's the funniest thing about that story: Eddie Murphy's [at "Late Night"] last November to promote that movie he did with Ben Stiller, Tower Heist. When some real A-list stars come in, all the hallways are quiet and you can hear a pin drop. It's real tension. Usually, when the Megan Foxes of the world-- or anybody in that top half of the Maxim list-- are here, all of a sudden it's quiet as a mouse. Other cats, like Springsteen, just come here and pop in our room without knocking, sit down, talk to us. That's regular.

So when Eddie was here, he was in the hallway-- and there's at least 80 people in that hallway-- and it was deadly silent. He's just standing there and it's a real awkward moment. I said, "Can I talk to him for a second?" Then: "Hey, it's such an honor for you to be here. I gotta ask you a question. I don't know if you remember, but Valenti..." And I swear I did not even get the entire word "Valentine's" out of my mouth, and he says, "roller skates!" [laughs] The recapping of the story was almost better than the experience, because that made me look like the coolest person at 30 Rock. All of a sudden it was just he and I in our own world, and we were laughing so hard that everyone else started laughing.

I have like nine UFO stories, which is basically a story that no one's ever going to believe. Like if my ex wasn't with me on Valentine's Day, I would tell the story to no one, because they would just say, "You're making it up." It was like [Eddie] and I were Vietnam veterans or something, like we were in the same platoon. I was like, "Yo, man, do you realize how hard it is to get people to believe that story? How many times I've had to call my ex to verify that, like, 'Yes, we were there. And, yes, Prince had on the roller skates.'"

Eddie added to the story. Everyone pretty much knows that Prince's Jehovah's Witness conviction is strong. So at one point, Eddie says that Prince [skated] past him going backwards and said [making the two-fingers-across-eyes Prince sign], "When are you going to give your life to Jehovah, Eddie Murphy?" [laughs]

Pitchfork: And Prince was just a figure of grace in those skates, right?

AT: Amazing. I heard he has a near-200 bowling game, too. Prince let us take over Paisley Park for about two weeks-- he gave Common free use of the studio while he was on the road. It was the most surreal thing. There's so many gnomes and busts and over-the-top illustrations of his face alone. And I swear to God, if you're walking in the dark and there's white walls with black paintings, it's like the eyes are following you. There was a point where I was feeling the wall to see if there were hidden cameras.

Pitchfork: You've had a chance to work with a lot of people who you grew up idolizing. Was there a point along the way when you became unfazed by that?

AT: Well, I had one regret about this book coming out so soon-- the lesson that I learned doing Al Green's Lay It Down record. He's an eccentric genius, and I think that if you are this supremely gifted artist, then there will checks and balances-- something else will be missing.

So there's this point where my whole thing was to go kind of nouveau retro and take him back to a more natural, soulful place, closer to Willie Mitchell, below the Mason-Dixon Line kind of thing. And we had a really good groove going for the first three months of creating and writing the music. Then Al gets on this tangent, he says, "Stevie wrote us a song." Instantly, I'm like, "Even if I were to do a Stevie Wonder song, it's not gonna sound like it's a Memphis song. There's a certain groove we have. This record's coherent this way and now you're talking about a Stevie Wonder song?" He said, "Yeah, man! Stevie Wonder's 'I Love You Too Much'-- that was my song!" Now I'm thinking, "Wait a minute! That's the second song on In Square Circle, from 1985. I don't wanna cover that song! That song has nothing to do with what we're doing texture-wise." We kinda shrugged it off. Then later, we needed a cover song. [Al said], "Hey! I've got a cover song! Stevie Wonder wrote me a song called 'I Love You Too Much'." And I said, "Yeah, we know, we know!" So I think, "Well, we can try it out and he'll forget about it." And he forgets about it.

Three months later, we've got 10 songs. [Al says], "What about Stevie? I wanna do that." Basically, Al became the little boy that cried "I Love You Too Much". For three years, from 2003 to early 2006, that's all he kept talking about, to the point where it just became the running joke behind his back. [The cover did not end up on Lay It Down.]

Now, cut to like two months ago. A friend of mine [who works at a label] gets a call from a storage facility in Philadelphia that alerts him to the fact that payments on a storage unit are long overdue and that they're gonna shut it down and trash all these reels they had in there. And there's a lot of reels! They said, "We know that some of these artists are on your label, so you might want to see about this." And they run off names like Bowie and Stevie Wonder. So I tell my friend, like, "Yeah, send the Stevie reel." There are seven songs on there, and the date on one of the songs is September 11, 1977. It's a duet with Al Green-- "I Love You Too Much"! And this shit sounded like a Memphis song! I call Rich up, I'm like, "Yo! He was telling the truth!" Oh, man! I was so sick, like, all the time we was clowning him about this non-existent thing: "Suuuure you did a song with Stevie."

Pitchfork: Are there other music memoirs that inspired you for this book?

AT: The two I loved the most also broke my heart the most. Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gayewas extremely haunting. And Brian Wilson's book [Wouldn't It Be Nice] was really heartbreaking. After reading that, I didn't know if I had a story that was interesting enough. I thought, "Did I suffer for my art enough? What am I gonna do when I get to chapter eight?"

I'm neurotic about it, but somehow, I managed to read my book. It's one thing when you write it and email stuff in and they send you the drafts back with corrections and all that stuff. But then I'm reading it and I'm almost at the end. For a few moments, I actually kinda read it third-person. I was like, "OK. This guy is interesting."